The Best Laid Plans
by Wynn
Summary: Darcy drags Jane to the common room in Avengers Tower to snoop on a newly arrived Bucky in order to determine where he falls on the sane-to-crazy scale, setting off a chain of events including eggs and glitter, sassy flirting, and deranged overprotection.
1. The Best Laid Plans

AN: This is what happens when I write too much sad Bucky Barnes. I bounce wildly in the complete opposite direction for a short happy ficlet. This may or may not become an informal series.

The Best Laid Plans

By: Wynn

"We shouldn't be here."

They shouldn't be. Jane was right about that. Steve had asked the team (and their sidekicks, which, for official purposes, included Jane and Darcy) for some space as he gave his former friend turned recent enemy turned even more recent convalescing headcase the grand tour of his new home in Avengers Tower. Limiting stressors, Steve had said. And Darcy got it. Most of the people in the Tower had actively tried to kill the former Winter Soldier before, and he, in turn, had tried even harder to kill them. Springing them all on the dude, despite his alleged sound mind would likely lead to bloodshed and severed limbs. But since neither Darcy nor Jane had been the killer or killee in any of these encounters, Darcy figured that they had some wiggle room, so she'd grabbed Jane by the arm and hauled her to the elevator, only releasing her once they stood in the hall outside the common room.

Jane pokes her now in the side. "He doesn't need us gawking at him, Darcy. From what Steve has told Thor, the poor guy has had enough of that for three lifetimes."

"It's not _gawking_," Darcy protests, swatting at Jane's hand. "It's reconnoitering."

"Reconnoitering?"

"Yes, Jane. Reconnoitering."

There's a second of silence and then Jane sighs and shakes her head. "You've been hanging out too much with Clint."

"Hence the reconnoitering. If anyone needs a new friend, aside from me, it's him." She jerks her thumb over her shoulder at the common room. "I just need to see where he is on the sane-to-crazy scale so I know how best to make my approach."

"And you couldn't just wait for Steve to officially introduce you two?"

Darcy shakes her head. "I need to strike fast. Barton's already got a plan laid out."

"A plan— Wait. Are you guys _competing _to be this guy's friend?"

Darcy narrows her eyes at Jane. "Give me some credit. Please. This is not a competition."

"Good."

"It's a rescue mission."

Jane stares at her for a full five seconds before she raises one hand and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Well, I know where _you _fall on the sane-to-crazy scale."

"Lower than Barton," Darcy argues. "Seriously, Jane, he's got a Bucky Barnes hard-on that puts Phil's man-love for Steve to shame. The dude grew up idolizing B-squared. He had a Bucky Bear. It's why he became a marksman."

Now Jane narrows her eyes at Darcy. "How do you know this?"

Darcy turns toward the doorway and tries not to squirm.

"Darcy."

She squirms. "I may, or may not, have, uh, gotten him somewhat intoxicated on a bottle of Thor's special brew with the intent of, you know, getting him to spill all his tiny hawk secrets."

A second of silence passes and then Jane smacks Darcy on the shoulder. "We were saving that."

"What?" she asks, turning back around. "It was an emergency. Barton caught me stuffing glitter in the exhaust ports of Tony's suit. I needed _protection_."

"I— You know what? I don't want to know."

Jane turns to leave. Darcy lunges after her, latching onto her right arm. "You can't leave."

"Yes, I can."

"No, you can't. Steve's less likely to kill me for snooping if you're here."

"Maybe he wouldn't want to kill you so much," she says as she turns back around, "if you didn't keep calling him—" She stops, her eyes widening as her face grows pale. Jane blinks twice and then whispers to Darcy, "Never mind. You're fucked."

Darcy doesn't need to look behind her to know that Steve stands there, his most impressive Captain America scowl likely in place. She can feel the righteous heat of his gaze burning a hole in the back of her head. Her hands tighten around Jane's arm, so much so that Jane winces in pain. She tries to pull her arm free, but Darcy just holds on harder, desperation fueling her to an iron grip.

"You can't leave me."

"Yes, I can," Jane hisses as she claws at Darcy's fingers. "This was _your _stupid idea. This was _her _stupid idea," she says now to Steve, trying, but failing, to send him a soothing smile. "One of about a thousand," she mutters, looking back at Darcy.

"Oh, like you can talk," Darcy says, digging in her heels as Jane tries to use her body weight to pry her arm free. "Tornado chasing. Breaking and entering into secure government facilities. And do I need to mention your abominable taste in men?"

Jane stops in her efforts long enough to gape at Darcy. "My taste? _My _taste? _You're_ the one who dated the Hydra mole."

"I didn't know he was a mole when I started dating him. And I was the one who caught him, so, really, you should be thanking me."

"Thanking you? _You hired a Hydra mole_!"

"I was bored! This is why you should never leave me unsupervised."

"Uh, Doctor Foster?"

It takes a moment for Darcy to realize that Steve's voice comes not from behind her but from in front. She peers past Jane and finds him about a dozen feet away, newly disembarked from the elevator and staring at them with a look of utter confusion on his face. Upon this realization, three things happen in quick succession: 01) Jane takes advantage of her stunned disposition to finally wrench herself free, which 02) causes Darcy to stumble back into the man standing behind her, and this, of course, results in 03) her entire life flashing before her eyes as she realizes she is well and truly fucked as Jane had said because the man behind her is not Steve Rogers, otherwise known as Captain America, but his BFF, Bucky Barnes, the man known as the (allegedly, hopefully, newly please, please, _please_) rehabilitated Winter Soldier.

"Fuck me," Darcy mutters, closing her eyes.

"Only if you buy me dinner first. I'm an old-fashioned guy. Allegedly."

Darcy whirls around at the sound of his voice. The man before her looks, and sounds, nothing like the mental image she'd constructed at Steve's sad tale of brainwashing woe. Prior to this moment, she had envisioned Bucky Barnes as the human form of a sad puppy, all hunched shoulders and huge eyes glistening with sorrow. That is, most certainly, _not_ Bucky Barnes. Bucky Barnes is worn denim jeans and a tight white t-shirt. He's a five o'clock shadow and dark, tousled hair that frame bright blue eyes that don't glisten with sorrow but gleam with amusement. He's a plush bottom lip caught between his teeth and a warm palm in a sure grip low on her waist. He is, without a doubt, the sexiest man that Darcy has ever seen, and she is, as Jane said she was, well and truly fucked.

"So, Darcy," he says, staring down at her, and for two seconds, Darcy clings to the hope that Steve had told him her name in advance, hope that she quickly abandons for the likelier alternative that he had heard everything she and Jane had said from the moment they stepped off the elevator, "how _did _you catch the Hydra mole?"

"I, uh, walked in on him stealing files."

"And then she threw a four-thousand dollar spectrophotometer at his head, kicked him in the balls, and then tazed him in the ass. Literally," Jane says from behind her. "In the ass."

Bucky blinks at that, and Darcy's about to explain how she's not usually so violent, how she's quite pleasant to be around most of the time, how that asshole _really _deserved it, eating the last slice of the chocolate cake she'd baked and refusing to reciprocate her sexually the night before, on top of, you know, his evil thievery, but then a wicked grin unfurls on Bucky's face and she feels a swooping bird of heat dive down through her body at the sight.

His hand still on her waist, Bucky says to Steve, "Steve, I think I'm _really _going to like your friends."

Yes, indeed, she was well and truly fucked.


	2. Egg on Your Face

AN: More crack-fic ahead, which means that none of the comments about Clint's love for Bucky or his affront at Darcy's public proclamation of it are intended to be homophobic in nature. Just good, old-fashioned embarrassment at having your love for your childhood idol declared in the most awkward way possible.

Egg on Your Face

The sequel to The Best Laid Plans

By: Wynn

"You're a dead woman, Lewis."

"Oh, shit."

Clint stands at the entrance to the lab, a paper bag and a box in his hands and a deep, deep desire for murder in his eyes. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why. Three days had passed since Bucky had arrived at the Tower, two since Steve had introduced him one-on-one to each member of the team (Darcy had safely hidden in the storage closet by the lab, huddling behind a massive wall of toilet paper, to avoid a repeat performance of their initial interaction), and one day since, presumably, Clint had tried to initiate Phase One of his epic plan to become best friends with Bucky 'Don't-call-me-Winter-Soldier' Barnes.

Darcy looks at Clint, at the way his eye twitches and his lip curls. She reckons it must have gone badly.

"You told him," Clint says, stepping into the lab, "about the Bucky Bear."

Scratch that. It must have gone _very _badly.

"Um… no, I didn't."

"He said you did."

"And who are you going to believe?" Darcy asks, raising her brows at him. "Me, your _friend_, or the dude who tried, on multiple occasions I might add, to heinously murder the love of your life and, like, half of everyone else you know?"

"Him."

Darcy folds her arms across her chest and tries not to pout. "You're a traitor, Barton."

"_I'm _the traitor? _You're _the one who told him about the bear, which I told to you in _confidence_, by the way."

"Actually, you told it to me in drunkenness—"

Clint narrows his eyes at her.

"—which is not the point," Darcy admits. "And, _by the way_, I didn't tell Bucky about the bear. I told Jane."

Clint's jaw drops and Darcy knows she's doomed. "Jane knows?"

"Kind of."

"Kind of? How can someone kind of know?"

Darcy opens her mouth to try to worm her way out of trouble, but no salvation comes to mind. Deflating, she says, "Okay. Yes. She knows. But I did _not_ tell Bucky."

"Then how does he know?"

Darcy's eyes dart around the lab, searching for an escape route she already knows doesn't exist. Only one door led to freedom and continued life and limb, and before that door stood one irate and possibly deranged former assassin.

She was so fucked.

"Lewis!"

Darcy jumps at the sharp crack of his voice. "He may have, uh," she starts to ease back from her workstation, "possibly, well, more likely," she stumbles over her bag, "overheard us."

"What?!"

She winces at his piercing tone. No wonder they called him Hawkeye. "Well, how was I supposed to know he had such freakishly good hearing?"

"You live with Steve! You spent an entire week figuring out his exact range of hearing so you could play 'Captain Got Back' on an endless loop without him wanting to murder you."

"Oh. Yeah."

She smirks at the memory. All had been well until Tony had wandered into the lab one day while she played it and then promptly ordered Jarvis to play the song whenever Steve entered a room occupied by one or more members of the team. After a week of this, Darcy thought that Steve would abandon his principle of protecting civilians and defending the defenseless to murder her in her sleep for inadvertently introducing the song to Tony.

Which brings her back to—

"What else did you say about me?" Clint asks her now.

"Uh… nothing?"

He stares at her a long moment, his eyes narrowed to tiny, gleaming slits. Darcy tries not to pee her pants. She understands a little better the attraction between Clint and Natasha. Both of them were scary as fuck when they wanted to be.

"Yes, you did," Clint says softly. "You said something else. Learning about the bear wouldn't have made him _that _awkward around me. Thousands of people had those bears."

It's times like these that Darcy wishes she was a super awesome spy. Then she would know how to school her features to hide the truth, the memory that suddenly flashes into her mind of her blurting out at an excessively high volume about how Clint had a huge boner for Bucky Barnes.

"Uh…"

"Don't lie to me, Lewis. You won't like the consequences."

It's shit like this that gets her into trouble. And Clint knows it because he knows her. Because she told him about the bar in Puente Antiguo and the stuffy party in Tromso and the ride from hell on the Tube in London. She tries to be calm, to be cool, to be like Natasha, existing high above the petty baiting of men, but then Clint smirks at her and Darcy lifts her chin into the air.

"I'm not afraid of you."

"You should be," he says. He lifts his hand, and she realizes that he doesn't hold a box in it like she first thought.

He holds a half-carton of eggs.

Oh, _shit_.

Why? Why would Bucky have mentioned her boner comment to Clint? He was supposed to be good now. An American hero. A stand up guy. Steve liked him for a reason. But then she recalls the utter delight he took in Jane's account of her kicking her traitorous scumbag of an ex in the balls before tazering him in the ass, and she knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that he would. He so would.

She narrows her eyes.

Bucky Barnes was a dead man.

Her gaze drops to the eggs.

If Clint didn't kill her first.

Speaking of—

Clint looks at her another moment, clearly waiting for her to spill her guilty guts, but she can't now. She's blustered too far. She lifts her chin further into the air and tries to stare him down. His smirk widens into a terrifying grin, and she watches in a tiny bit of trepidation as he reaches behind him to close the door to the lab.

"Do you know what they used to do to betrayers in the past, Darcy?" He doesn't wait for her to finish, or to properly process her complete and utter dread at him calling her by her first name. He continues on, easing a few steps closer, engaging, as he does, in an epic villain monologue with surprising ease. "Tar and feathering. The first use of it allegedly occurred during the Crusades, from Richard the fucking Lionhearted. They did it during the American Revolution too. And in both World Wars. Think of that. For over eight hundred years, people have been tarring and feathering no good, low down, dirty traitors. Now, I can't use tar against you. Thor would kill me. And, you know, you _are_ my friend. But I will smash every single one of these eggs against your traitorous face and dump so many feathers on you that people are going to think you mutated into a giant, evil, lying chicken."

Darcy's eyes widen. She feels her mouth go dry. "You wouldn't."

Clint says nothing. He just shifts the paper bag to his left hand, the one holding the eggs, and reaches into it, unearthing a gallon sized freezer bag jam packed with brightly colored feathers.

Darcy eyes the bag and the feathers inside. Those, maybe, she could avoid if she evaded Clint long enough to flee the lab. Not the eggs though. Not from the greatest marksman in the world. Darcy wasn't _that _fast or agile. At the very least then, she was half doomed, ensured to have at least three of those suckers used against her, so she does what all the doomed do when faced with their inevitable doom.

She makes it worse.

"You won't," she says, lifting her chin again, "or I'll tell Bucky all about your fanboy Tumblr."

Clint blanches and Darcy unleashes her own evil grin.

"Forgot you showed me that, didn't you? Well, you did, and it doesn't matter if you try to delete it now to stop me. I already screencapped everything, so all I have to do is send him a file."

"Then all I have to do," he says, his voice rising in pitch, "is give Steve all the copies I made of your Captain America fanfiction! I got everything, Lewis. Even the porn."

She feels her face flush. Clint confirms it half a second later with a shit-eating grin. Well, if he wanted to play that game, she could play that game. "You do that and I'll tell Tony that it was _you_ who cut all his whiskey and scotch with apple cider vinegar."

"You wouldn't dare."

"I would."

"Then I'll tell him about the cotton balls!"

"Then I'll tell him about the bird nests!"

"Then I'll tell him about the fire!"

"Oh, you are so dead!"

"Not if I dead you first!"

Darcy dives as Clint opens the carton of eggs. She reaches for the fire extinguisher beneath the countertop, fumbling as Clint barrels across the lab. Her fingers clamp down as Clint rounds the island. He opens fire then, flinging the first egg. Darcy grunts as it splats against her back, but she doesn't deviate from her mission, yanking the extinguisher free and letting the foam fly. She manages to douse half of Clint before he bats the extinguisher away, looming over her to smash another egg against her head. Darcy scrambles for her bag before he pins her down. She manages to get her foot in his face long enough to distract him, and she seizes her glitter as he pulls out his third egg. Clint pins her leg to the floor and raises the egg, so Darcy looks past him and widens her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Bruce—"

Clint stills and his eyes dart to the side. As they do, Darcy upends the glitter on his head, swiping a glob of egg yolk from her hair to smash into his face.

"You're so gullible, Clinton. So—"

The third egg catches her right in the chest. Darcy gasps as bits of shell and yolk drip down her shirt.

"Not the boobs!" she bellows. "They're sacred territory!"

"More sacred than my dick, Lewis?" Clint shakes his head and sends glitter raining down on her sticky chest. "You didn't seem to have any hesitation at all when you talked to Bucky Barnes about my dick!"

"For the last time," she says as she kicks the egg carton out of his reach, "I told _Jane _about your dick and its epic man-love for Bucky, not Bucky himself."

"That doesn't make it better!"

"Well, it should!"

Clint grunts as he tries to grasp the carton of eggs. He leans over just enough for Darcy to wiggle free. She's up and charging across the lab when he looses two eggs in quick succession, both aimed at her ass. She crashes against the door and fumbles for the control; her fingers, sticky with egg, smear fingerprints all over the screen. In the glass, she sees Clint approach, the final egg in one hand and the bag of feathers in the other. Desperate, she tilts her face up toward the ceiling and cries out, Jarvis! Open the lab door!"

"My apologies, Ms. Lewis. But it seems that Mr. Stark has temporarily revoked your access privileges. Something about glitter in his exhaust ports, I believe."

Her eyes widen as an access panel opens above her head. A second later Tony pops into view followed by an enormous bag of feathers, primed and ready to blow.

The smile that he sends her way can only be described as diabolical. "Payback's a bitch, Lewis."

Clint flings the final egg as Tony blows the bag. The egg smashes two inches from Darcy's head. She recoils, twisting around just as they had planned, just in time to catch the feathers full in the face. With a grimace, she realizes that it's not just feathers adhering to her sticky body as they fall, but also multi-colored, penis-shaped confetti, the kind used for bachelorette parties.

She wonders as both Clint and Tony start to laugh if she would be considered a super-villain if she murdered the both of them, both Hawkeye and Iron Man and, possibly, likely, the newly reformed Winter Soldier, in their beds as they slept.

She hopes so, especially when she hears the click of a camera and looks up to find Clint taking a picture of her in all her egg-and-feather glory with his phone. She takes little triumph in the fact that he bears war wounds too, Clint half-covered in foam and glitter with a sticky smear of yolk across his face.

"This means war, dude."

"Oh, I know it does," Clint says as he snags another picture. "And I've already got Phases Two, Three, and Four completely planned out. Tony helped me."

Darcy tilts her head to glare at Tony. He wags his eyebrows at her, his face bright with manic triumph.

"You can avoid your complete and utter annihilation," Clint continues, "if you can convince Bucky that I'm _not _a horny, lecherous stalker already planning our epic spy wedding to each other."

"So you want me to lie?" Darcy asks, mutinous, casting her glare now on Clint.

He rips open his bag of feathers, reaching inside to grab a handful. "Complete and utter annihilation, Lewis. Not even Thor can save you."

She contemplates fighting on for two more seconds, but the prospect of an extended engagement against both Clint _and _Tony without any allies (Clint usually her ally against Tony) dissuades her. "Fine. _Fine_. I'll do it."

"Great," Clint says, grinning now. "You have thirty minutes."

"What?!"

"Better get going, kid," Tony says from above her. "You'll probably need at least fifteen of those to convince Steve to let you in the door."

"And another ten just to wait out their laughter at your appearance right now."

Darcy eyes first one and then the other. She knows she looks like a deranged gay chicken farm from the 1970s exploded all over her. No doubt that was their intention. She wonders for half a second if Bucky had any part to play in this portion of their plan, if he'd mentioned, deliberately or inadvertently, her somewhat lecherous ogling of him when they first met. She glances at Clint again. The sly look in his eyes makes her think yes. Well, if they thought that this would cow her in any way or increase their chances for success, they certainly had another think coming.

"Thirty minutes?" she says, turning for the door. "I'll do it in twenty."

Shoulders high, Darcy waits for Jarvis to open the lab door. When he does, she doesn't look back at Clint or Tony, channeling, she thinks, Natasha fairly well in her aloof demeanor as she walks down the hall to the elevator and to her complete and utter doom.

She was, again, as Jane had so accurately prophesied, so very fucked.


	3. T-Minus Twenty

AN: The wild dogs bit is a reference to _Bridget Jones's Diary_. Also there are copious references to man parts given the particular kind of confetti that currently covers Darcy. Also, again, the 'Captain Got Back' is my headcanon that, if Cap were real, some fan somewhere would have remade the song 'Baby Got Back' in his honor. There's a fair amount of cursing, which is understandable given Darcy's unfortunate situation, as well as many references to man parts (i.e. excessive use of the word dick and its synonyms), also understandable given Darcy's situation.

T-Minus Twenty

Part Three of "The Best Laid Plans" Series

By: Wynn

20:00

Darcy sets the timer on her phone and runs for the elevator. She leaves a trail of rainbow feathers in her wake, though not as many as she anticipated and she begins to fear that Tony applied some sort of adhesive especially designed to stick to her skin. A few of the lab monkeys working this floor peer at her as she runs by, but Darcy ignores them. Some take pictures of her as she passes, pictures that are most certainly being immediately uploaded to a plethora of social media, but she has bigger concerns facing her than potential embarrassment among the Internet and underlings: avoiding her promised annihilation at the hands of Clint and Tony and, after, getting her sweet, sweet revenge upon them in any way she could.

She skids to a stop before the elevator, already feeling the burn in her lungs from the unfamiliar physical exertion. Bending over, she slaps at the down button, but she has no time to catch her breath for, at that moment, Jarvis speaks.

"I apologize again, Ms. Lewis, but Mr. Stark has forbidden you access to the elevators for the next twenty-nine minutes."

Darcy blinks at the revelation. "But— but I need to get to the residence floors."

"Might I suggest the stairs?"

For a moment, she can't speak. Then she's shouting and shedding feathers, looking, she's sure, like a neon disco ostrich in the midst of a nervous breakdown. "That's _thirteen _floorsdown, Jarvis. I'll— I'll—"

"Complete the distance, one step at a time."

"I was gonna say _die_, but if you're want to be optimistic…"

She hears snickering behind her and turns to find a gaggle of peons gathered in the distance, all with Stark phones on and pointed at her. Darcy gives them a narrow-eyed glare, which scatters one or two of the weaker willed, before turning the stairs, saying as she does, "Jarvis, tell your assface of a boss I won't forget this."

"I'm relaying the message as we speak, Ms. Lewis."

18:00

Fueled by righteous fury, Darcy sails down the first few flights.

17:00

Fueled by grim determination, she walks down the next three.

15:30

Fueled by bitter fumes, she eases down the next two.

12:30

Fueled only by desperation and the fear that, if she collapses here, she'll die alone and be eaten by wild dogs before anyone can find her, she trudges down the next four, shedding dicks and feathers and bits of her left lung along the way.

9:00

Darcy flops through the door to Steve's floor, air sliding into and out of her lungs in an alarming wheeze. She collapses onto the ground in a sweaty, sticky heap, cursing the day she ever met Jane Foster and applied for that goddamned internship that led her here, to her dick-covered doom. Glitter grinds into her chest and a canary yellow feather tickles her nose as she tries to breathe. She can't summon the energy to either flop over or fetch the feather, so she lays, her ass up and face down, onto the monochrome tile.

8:00

Darcy rises, less like a phoenix and more like a just-birthed chicken, all wobbly knees and tacky in all senses of the word feathers, a magenta penis clinging to her right brow and egg yolk squishing beneath her boobs, and starts to shuffle down the hall to her intended destination. As she does, she retrieves her phone from her pocket to check the time. A polite person, such as Thor or Pepper, would describe the sound she makes in discovering that she's used over half her time just trying to _get _to her destination as a distressing cry.

Clint and Tony would call it the sweet sound of success.

Jane would take one look at Darcy and just shake her head, preferring to communicate her view of the sound as a pathetic moan in a non-verbal fashion.

Darcy calls it nothing, too panicked to waste the time and energy to sufficiently describe her despair, and instead lurches the final few feet to Steve's door where she knocks with one downy hand.

7:15

Twelve seconds after her knock, the door opens, to Steve, of course, because the universe hates Darcy, likely because Tony paid it to. He stares at her for ten precious seconds, his eyes going wide and mouth falling open as he takes her in. Darcy props herself against the wall, an action that earns her a slight grimace from Steve, and uses all of her remaining energy to croak out from pained lungs, "Buck…y."

Steve's brows climb to his hairline. "Bucky did this?"

Darcy shakes her head. Glitter and a green dick fall to the floor by his feet. "Cl— Clint."

At that, Steve sighs. It's the sigh of a man firm in the belief that he's surrounded by idiots. "He's not here, Darcy. If you can't find him, he's—"

"No." Gasp. "Here." Wheeze. "Talk." Puff. "Buck." Pant. "Please."

Steve needs a few seconds to process her stilted speech. When he does, he takes another moment to look at her before narrowing his eyes. "Why?"

And Darcy gets it. She does. Who wouldn't be suspicious of a polychromatic hissing chicken that demanded the presence of your recently rescued and quite possibly still evil best friend? But she doesn't have time. Thrusting a hand in front of his face, dislodging, in the process, more cocks and feathers that drift in a gentle arc to the floor, Darcy sucks in a desperate gulp of air and bleats out as loud as she can, "Barnes!"

"What?" he bellows from inside.

She opens her mouth to try to respond, but the only sound that issues forth is a feeble whine. Darcy closes her eyes and gives in to half a sob, a stitch in her side, egg on her ass, and rainbow dicks plastered to her décolletage.

"Are you… okay?"

With three words, her salvation dawns. God bless Captain Steve. God bless his concern for the small folk and their troubles, especially for hyperventilating interns that have, perhaps, too big of an obsession with his ass and his waist-to-shoulder ratio. Summoning the last bit of her strength, Darcy raises her head to fix Steve with her most pathetic kicked puppy-dog face, her eyes shimmering with tears and the slightest waver to her yolk-covered chin. Steve sighs at her blatant manipulation, but he still turns around and walks back into the apartment to say to Bucky, "Darcy needs to talk to you about… I don't know. Something nuts."

"Can't she come in? I need to blue shell this fucking turtle so he won't win the race."

"No, she can't come in. I'm going to have to disinfect the entryway as it is. I don't want to have to do the whole apartment."

There's a moment of silence from the apartment (a moment in which Darcy pries her hand from the wall, wincing at the twinkling residue she leaves behind) and then Steve sputters, "No, I didn't— I meant— Feathers, Buck. And… egg? Maybe. And there's— there's shiny… stuff. All over. Shiny…"

"What?"

Steve doesn't respond. Darcy checks her phone and nearly weeps to find that two minutes have passed.

"Steve. Just spit it out."

"Cocks, Bucky. She's covered in shiny cocks."

Utter silence follows his proclamation. Darcy closes her eyes and wonders if, even this high up, the Earth could still open and swallow a person whole. She considers making a break for it right then and there but a thump sounds from inside the apartment followed by hurried footsteps and then Bucky's at the door, staring at her like all his Christmas wishes had been answered in one sweaty, cranky, fluffy package.

5:00

"What happened? Tell me everything."

"Oh, like you don't know," she snaps, deviating wildly off course from her harried plan to save her soggy ass. "What the hell made you tell Clint that I said he had a huge hard-on for you?"

"You hiding in the storage closet when I came by."

Her eyes widen at the admission. Darcy tries to say something in response, priding herself on her repartee, but he's rendered her completely speechless and all she can do is gape.

Bucky leans against the doorframe, his eyes bright as they rake her up and down. "I have to say, I knew he'd do something afterward to get you up here, but this… This is beyond anything I could have imagined."

Darcy blinks at him, still thrown. "I…"

A grin teases the corners of his mouth. "You…?"

"I…will murder you in your sleep for this. So hard. You have… You have no idea."

Bucky looks her over again and his grin widens. "I think I have some idea."

"No. You don't. Because of you, Barton narced on me to Tony about the glitter in his suit, and now the two of them have teamed up against me. And the eggs I can accept. The feathers too. But they dropped tinfoil _penises_ on my head and made me walk down _thirteen_ flights of stairs so I can stand here in front of you with your _stupid_ face and your _stupid_ hair to try to get you to think that Barton is a completely sane individual and an ideal candidate for a friend. All so I can avoid their plan for my total annihilation. But you know what? Fuck that. Fuck Tony and fuck Barton and fuck their stupid plan and fuck you too, man. Because I will embrace whatever annihilation you all have in store for me and strike back with all the fury that I can muster, and believe me, dude, when I say that it's a shit-ton. Because I grew up in a small town with three older brothers, so you might know a dozen ways to kill people with your big toe, but I know three-dozen ways to make a grown man cry, so _prepare for obliteration, pal_."

Bucky gapes at her, his mouth hanging open in shock. Beyond him, Darcy sees Steve. He stares at her in equal astonishment. Some of her righteous rage diminishes at the sight.

"Not literal obliteration, Cap. Metaphorical. Metaphorical, um, murder."

Steve draws closer. Darcy squirms beneath his gaze, at the upright tilt of his jaw and the crease in his noble brow. "It's not right."

Darcy sighs and closes her eyes. It wasn't. But hadn't she endured enough? Wasn't this and the assured ignominy awaiting her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and in about twenty-five Vines enough to satisfy even the most barbaric of gods? Was a lecture by Captain Principle really necessary to make sure she learned her lesson?

"I know," she says, trying not to sigh again. "I'm—"

"—outnumbered," he says. "That's not right. Do you want some help?"

Her eyes fly open, hope dawning within her once more. "What?"

"Three against one," he says, shaking his head. "That's not right. I'd like to even those odds."

"Hey!" Bucky says, turning to scowl at Steve. "I never said I was on their side."

But Darcy only has eyes for Steve. "Are you serious?"

"If you want," he says. "Which isn't to say that I don't think you're capable on your own. Because you are. Just look at what you've accomplished so far. They tried their best to humiliate you. They set you up to fail in an unjust physical challenge. But you haven't let them beat you. You're choosing to fight on. I respect that." He takes a step forward then and holds out his hand. "I would be honored to fight alongside you, Ms. Lewis, in this most ridiculous of wars."

"Even against him?" she asks, pointing a feathered hand at Bucky, who watches the exchange with wide, disbelieving eyes.

"Especially against him," Steve says with a smile.

A polite person, Bruce, perhaps, or Jarvis, would describe the sound that she makes now as unbridled glee.

Clint and Tony would likely call it the sound of their imminent doom.

Jane would still take one look at Darcy and shake her head, this time as she walked away, but she would maybe walk away with a smile on her face, preferring to communicate her support for Darcy and her crusade in a non-verbal fashion.

Darcy calls it justice, the universe recognizing her plight and sending her a savior, a tactical genius, a secret anarchist punk who loved nothing more than to fight for the little guy against the corrupt and omnipotent man.

Squealing again, she does a small dance for joy and then says, "I accept your help, Captain, and would totally shake your hand except mine's covered in drying egg and really kind of gross right now. Like your wall. And your floor. And the bit of hall before the stairs. I wouldn't actually go into the stairs. Like, ever. Sorry."

Steve smiles again. "It's okay, Ms. Lewis. I used to live in a tenement. Feathers and egg are the least disgusting things I've come across in a hallway."

"What about shiny cocks?" she asks, grinning in return.

"Not even those. I lived in DUMBO, Ms. Lewis, back when it was even, uh, more colorful than it is now."

"Cool. And it's Darcy."

"Darcy," he agrees. "Now—" He eases closer, his face alight with mischief. "Can I tell Tony that we've joined forces? I just… I want to see his face. I _need_ to see his face."

"Hell yes." She steps back to give him room to leave but stops as a thought occurs. "Oooh, oooh, say 'Payback's a bitch, Stark' when you do. And— and get Jarvis to play 'Captain Got Back' as you leave."

Steve regards her a moment, and Darcy feels like preening under his appreciative gaze. He gives her a farewell nod and she salutes him, wincing only slightly at the feathers that flap against her face in her efforts. She watches him leave, as he carefully edges around the swath of dead bird before the stairwell, aware all the while of Bucky staring at her. Darcy shifts in place, the wild rush of promised triumph abating a bit and the potentiality for embarrassment rising. Her jeans have grown stiff as the egg has dried, and her boobs squish as she moves, but when she turns toward Bucky, he doesn't look at her in discomfort or distaste, but in something close to awe.

"You… are amazing."

Darcy feels herself flush at the unexpected compliment. She tries to hide it with a smirk and a Vanna White-esque wave of her absurd body. "Amazing. Yep. That's me."

"No, I'm serious. They told me stories about you, but they did not do you justice. At all."

Her flush intensifies. Darcy glances at Bucky from the corners of her eyes, finds him watching her with the same appreciation that she saw in Steve, but Steve didn't breathe fast as he looked at her or bite down on his bottom lip. Heat swirls within her at that, and Darcy looks away, down at her arm, where she flicks at a lavender cock and says as smoothly as she can, "Guess you picked the wrong side, dude."

"Maybe so," he says. "But I was trying to get to yours."

Her timer chimes then, a cheery salsa beat that makes Bucky grin. Darcy keeps her head down, both from the grin and the comment preceding it, under the pretense of silencing her phone. She presses her lips together to try to hide her smile, but she fails and she knows she fails because she can see Bucky from the corners of her eyes and thus see the grin that unfolds across his face as he takes her in.

She gives in then, at least to the smile. Looking up at him, she says, "I think you need to review your strategy. Since yours, you know, actually blew up in my face."

"I don't know," he says, leaning again against the doorframe and crossing his arms over his chest. "It got you up here, didn't it?"

Darcy gives him a look as she slides her phone back into her pocket. "Don't push your luck, dude. I've got egg in places it should never be."

His gaze drops blatantly to her chest, and the impish grin unfurls once more.

Darcy narrows her eyes. "Really? You're gonna ogle me now? With the dicks and the egg and the glitter?"

"Would it make it better if I also asked you to dinner?"

Her pulse jumps as he looks back at her. Bucky wears the same pair of sinful jeans as when they first met, but he's barefoot now and clad in a soft grey tee, and the sight of him, the intimacy of this moment which he makes in the way he stands and the way he looks at her, diminishes her ability to breathe.

"I think if I said yes," she says slowly, "then that would be fraternizing with the enemy."

Bucky leans closer. "It would be." His voice drops then, deliberately she thinks, but no less effectively, to a low rumble that makes her shiver. "But that's the best part."

She hoped so. Revenge against Clint and Tony would be sweet, but making out with Bucky would definitely be sweeter. After she showered, of course.

"Well then," she says as she turns to walk away, "pick me up at seven, oh enemy of mine. I'll see if I can't turn you to the glittering side of the force."


	4. Overprotection 'R' Us

AN: Part Four of "The Best Laid Plans" Series.

Overprotection 'R' Us

(Or T-Minus Twenty Part Two)

By: Wynn

At twenty minutes to seven, doom knocks on Darcy's door.

She stands in her bedroom, showered, shaved, her hair curled and her make-up done, half in and half out of her favorite pair of jeans. Despite the blatant ogling Bucky engaged in prior to her feathered departure earlier that day, she doubts it's him. Arriving this early clashed with his whole (allegedly reformed) bad boy aesthetic. Jane had already stopped by to simultaneously yell at and check up on Darcy after discovering the glittered disaster that was her lab. Maybe Thor then? But he didn't knock on doors so much as wallop them, nearly reducing the pressed wood to weeping smithereens with each pound of his hand. Natasha was still out of town, Bruce would never willingly stop by (not after her somewhat chaotic decorating sense nearly prompted the Other Guy into making an appearance), and Darcy didn't know Pepper well enough to expect an unannounced personal visit.

So this leaves Darcy with three options, all of them equal in their potential for doom.

Steve, Clint, or Tony.

By now, she imagines Steve had informed Tony of his participation in their most holy of wars: the prank war. This could have induced Tony into already retaliating or at least to an epic bitchfest about how he didn't know _outsiders_ were welcome to their secret society, much less the elderly, and how _he _wasn't going to be responsible if old man Rogers broke a hip or died from horrified shock at some of their more risqué shenanigans. Normally, Darcy would listen, one of the few who actually understood and enjoyed Tony's mile-a-minute patter. But she doesn't have time, not with Bucky and a date and some hot making-out (hopefully) imminent.

Darcy put on her skinny jeans for a reason.

With Clint, she hypothesizes two reasons for coming: further retaliation or potential reparation. She doubts further retaliation could result in anything more horrific than that afternoon's affront to chickens and crafts, but she needs to avoid even the mildest of physical reprisals because, while Bucky had so far resembled the living form of sexual godhood in their two encounters, Darcy had either been a) swathed in ratty leggings and a sweater three sizes too large for her or b) been the heinous affront to chickens and crafts. She has to maintain her hot-rolled, lip-glossed perfection at least until his arrival in order to guarantee the desired making-out and perhaps future dates.

If Clint came in peace, though, he came in friendship, and he came as the most well meaning yet nosiest and over-protective of big brothers, outstripping, at times, even Thor, Darcy can't predict how Clint would react to the knowledge of her date with Bucky. Either he'd go full-blown stalker and demand a play-by-play of their first kiss or he'd run to get his bow so he could interrogate the former Winter Soldier about his intentions, which were so clearly (and thankfully) lecherous that it could only end in fisticuffs and bloodshed between them.

Two options also went hand in hand with Steve. Either nefarious scheming against Clint and Tony brought him here or the more worrisome option did- _Steve _as the over-protective big brother come to ask _Darcy _about her demented and libidinous intentions towards his recently rehabilitated and potentially still psychically fragile best friend.

It's times like these that Darcy wishes she lived in a normal apartment building. Then she could hightail it out a window or back door and carefully evade detection. Such a feat was impossible though in the Tower since Darcy was neither Spider-man nor one capable of flight. She supposes she could just stay quiet and hide and hope whoever it was goes away, but that made an encounter with Bucky that much more likely, and Darcy had had enough awkward encounters involving him this past week to last a lifetime. All future encounters with Bucky needed to be sassy and filled with sexual tension, whether resolved or unresolved, so whoever lurked outside her apartment needed to go away.

Now.

Sighing, she dons her jeans and grabs her shoes and purse to head for the door. There, she says, "Who is it?"

"Clint."

Darcy clicks on the small screen by the door for the video feed. Clint holds pizza and beer in his hands, a sight that usually made Darcy do her happy dance but now makes her a little queasy because it signified option B, brother-friend, which she didn't want to shut down, Clint really her friend, but that she had to, Bucky really hot.

"I wanted to apologize," Clint says now. "I may have, uh, gone a little overboard this afternoon."

"You think?" she says, donning her first shoe. "You dropped dicks on my head, Barton, and then made me walk down stairs. Do you know how traumatized I am?"

He grimaces at that. "Technically, that was Tony—"

"—who got involved because youtold him about the glitter."

Clint sighs. "I didn't tell him anything he didn't already know. Who else would stuff glitter in his suit?"

Darcy pulls on her second shoe. "He may have _suspected _it was me, but he didn't have proof. Not until you gave it to him. So fly away with your food bribes, bird man, because I am not forgiving you until tomorrow."

He pouts a little and holds up the pizza. "But it's pepperoni and pineapple."

She knows. She can smell the heavenly aroma through the door, but right now Bucky in his jeans trump free pizza on the Darcy Lewis Desirable Scale, so she says, "Bring me another one with some ice cream tomorrow and all will be—"

"Lewis! Get your traitorous intern ass out here right now!"

—shit. All will be shit apparently because the universe still hated her, courtesy of Tony fucking Stark.

"Is she in there?" he asks Barton, his voice getting louder as he closes in on her door.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Do you know who she's roped into helping her elude sweet justice?"

Clint regards the door, wounded betrayal flashing in his eyes.

"It's not Bucky," she says through the comm. "That scheming schemer told you what I said on purpose knowing you'd retaliate against me. He is noton my side."

Or in her pants.

Yet.

"No," Tony says. "It's not Barnes. Though I wish it was. He, at least, seems to have some sense of humor."

Clint sighs now. Darcy knows that if he had a hand free, he'd pinch— Nope, there he goes, shifting the beer to beneath his left arm so that he can pinch the bridge of his nose. "We talked about this, Darcy. I know you love Thor, but his concept of a prank is an act of war here."

Darcy grabs her purse and pulls out her small mirror. "It's not Thor."

"Bruce?" Clint asks, and Darcy doesn't need to look at the feed to see the trepidation on his face. Big Green had not taken too kindly to one of their pranks on Tony (the bird nests) spilling over into his lab space.

"Worse," Tony says as she fluffs out a curl. "So much worse. So very, very, _very _much—"

"Stark."

"Captain Drab, Hawkniss. Lewis got her very own super-dweeb to be the buzz kill to all of our fun."

Darcy glances at the feed in time to see Clint blanch. Smiling, she says, "Yeah, that's right, Barton. You two are about to get a Cap in your collective ass."

"Okay, one," Tony says, looking at the camera, "that was the weakest and dumbest comeback in the history of words, Lewis."

"Your face is dumb."

"And that was the second lamest," he continues before turning to Clint. "It's Cap, Barton, not—"

"Exactly, Stark. It's Cap. Captain America. Serum-enhanced super tactician."

"For war. Not for pranks."

"_And _it's Steve Rogers," Clint continues.

Tony looks at him blankly.

Clint tries not to sigh again. "Have you paid _any _attention to the stories about his childhood and the kind of shit he'd get into with Bucky?"

"Uh, no, because dying of boredom is not exactly high on my agenda."

Clint stares at Tony for a full five seconds, his mouth a flat line, and Darcy does a small jig of joy at the likely regret he feels for throwing her over in a fit of idol-induced insanity.

"Regretting your life choices, Barton?"

Tony speaks before Clint can. Because of course he does. "Not as much as you're going to regret yours, Lewis, if you don't let us in to talk about your _extreme _lack of judgment."

Darcy dumps her mirror back into her purse, grabs her phone, and checks the time. Thirteen minutes until Bucky would arrive. _If _he came exactly on time. But no one came exactly on time, except maybe Steve. People either came a little early or late, and Darcy thinks Bucky is a late, but he was also friends with Steve, a former Sergeant in the army, _and _he'd looked at Darcy like Christmas had come early, so maybe he would, too.

Eight minutes then. That gave her a five-minute window in which Bucky would likely arrive.

Eight minutes to get Clint and Tony the hell away without awakening their suspicions as to why.

What to say then? What to say?

"No," she settles on. "Go away."

Tony pouts, predictably, at her response, but Clint narrows his eyes. Which of course he would. He knows Darcy too well. Temporarily rejecting pizza and beer was one thing. but rejecting the opportunity to lord her excellent partner-in-crime over them, especially Tony, was another one altogether.

A suspicious one.

Predictably, she panics.

"My social life does not exclusively revolve around you two bozos. I have, uh, friends, you know. And things that I, um, do. So go… go away now."

Now Tony frowns at the door. Shit.

And now Clint frowns at Tony. Double shit.

And now Tony frowns back at Clint. Triple shit.

"Who is he?" they ask together, looking back at the door.

"I… have no idea—"

Tony holds up a hand. "Can the innocent act, Lewis. We're on to you, so don't even think you can drive us away before we meet this guy and literally scare the crap out of him before running copious amounts of background checks."

"I don't think—" she begins.

Tony shakes his head. "Nope. Not gonna happen. And you want to know why?" He glances at Clint. "Go on, Arrow. Tell her why."

When Clint bypasses the chance to bitch at Tony for the Oliver Queen reference and instead turns to the door, Darcy knows that she's well and truly doomed. "Two words," he says, smiling at her. "Hydra mole."

Darcy sighs. You date one Hydra mole and no one ever trusted your boyfriend judgment again. Pressing her lips together, she glances at her phone. Seven minutes until her safety bubble popped and Bucky possibly arrived, and while 'brainwashed but now recovered former Hydra assassin' ranked higher on the dating scale than 'secret evil Hydra mole,' she didn't think it rated high enough to avoid the concerned big brother interrogations from both Tony and Clint.

"Darcy."

She winces at Clint's tone. And the use of her first name. "What?"

"If you don't open the door in the next five seconds, I will do it."

Her eyes widen. "You wouldn't."

"I will. If you force my hand. It's your choice."

"And you called me the traitor," she says, desperation rising.

"Five."

"So much for friendship, _Clinton_. And privacy. And sanity."

"Four."

"Like you two have such sparkling dating records."

"Three."

"I'll tell Natasha."

Clint hesitates but steels himself and continues on. "Two."

Tony raises his brows. "Damn, Barton. That's hardcore."

"No," Darcy shouts into the comm. "That's crazy. You're all one hundred percent absolutely goddamn nuts. Why do you think I never want to bring any of them around to meet you? You need therapy. You need hugs. You need restraining orders—"

"One."

"Fine," she says, wrenching open the door. "Just don't call Thor."

Darcy loved Thor. He was the big brother she always wished she had, rather than the three hellspawn that her parents birthed and who stuck gum in her hair and ruined the awesomeness of Santa Claus when she was three years old, or the two deranged lunatics before her now. And Thor loved Darcy, viewing her as the younger, saner sibling he never had. But what Thor did not love were any of the guys she dated, none of them, he loudly and repeatedly claimed, being worthy of her affections. So he brought out the big guns, literally, donning the full bicep-baring Asgardian regalia, leaving Mew-Mew in some conspicuous place, one time stained with ketchup so as to resemble blood. Jane had tried to talk him out of it, and Darcy had thought she'd escaped it when they'd moved here, but then came the Hydra mole and her friendships with Clint and Tony, and Bucky would never want to make-out with her now, much less touch her in unmentionable places, with those three lunatics overplaying the protective card.

Twin smiles greet her as she opens the door, but they both vanish as Clint and Tony take her in.

"Shit," Clint says.

"Heels," Tony mutters.

"Curled hair. _Brushed_ hair."

"Clothes that actually fit."

"Hey!"

They ignore her indignant shout.

"Is that… perfume?" Clint asks, leaning closer and making Darcy ease back.

"Yes, it is," Tony says.

"Shit," Clint says again.

"You know what this means."

"Yes, I do."

Tony turns to her and shakes her head sadly. "We got a Level 10."

"A level ten?" Darcy asks.

"A Level 10," Clint confirms.

"What the fuck's a level ten?"

"A Level 10," Tony explains, "is the highest level of interest on our Darcy Lewis Dating Scale."

Clint nods. "This guy, whoever he is, is a Level 10. You've bypassed glasses for contacts and chapstick for lipstick."

"And you've got big girls out and your big girl heels on."

"Gross, dude."

"I completely agree," Tony says. "You should put a sweater on, Lewis. Or twelve."

Clint continues before Darcy can respond. "You're wearing your favorite jeans, the pair you never wear here anymore because of the kitchen incident that nearly incinerated them."

"And," Tony adds, "you're wearing your favorite color."

She was. She loved burgundy. She looked hot in burgundy.

"You've curled your hair," Clint says.

"And put on perfume."

"And your bag is small."

"But your earrings aren't."

"So," they say, looking at her. "A Level 10."

Darcy gapes at them a full ten seconds before shaking her head and turning away. "I hope you two realize how absolutely creepy you are right now."

"Oh, we know," Tony says as he follows her inside. "But desperate times and all."

"My love life is not desperate," she protests, turning for the living room.

Clint closes the front door. "Depends on who your date is."

A hot, blue-eyed and bristly super-hero assassin soldier from the 1940s who was, undoubtedly, a Level 10. But Darcy doesn't say this. Instead, she glances at the clock on the wall and winces at the time. Eight minutes to seven. Three minutes then until Bucky could possibly arrive. Three minutes to try to convince Clint and Tony to abandon their lunacy and to allow her and, most importantly, her date to leave unscathed.

Sitting in the chair closes to the hall, Darcy directs Clint and Tony to the couch. She watches them sit, watches Clint pass Tony a beer, watches Tony wince at the brand but still pop the tab as Clint opens the pizza box and retrieves a slice, and all the while, Darcy tries to think of a plan. Twenty precious seconds pass before she abandons thinking and goes on instinct because her plans suck anyway and thinking required time she didn't have.

So.

"Okay," she begins. "You're right. The dude's a 10, and I am interested. A lot. So, _as my friends_, could you not take a big fat crap all over this by ambushing and interrogating him? Because, seriously, what guy is going to want to stick around after experiencing that level of crazy?"

Clint smiles at her around an enormous bite of pizza. "One who appreciates friends looking out for each other."

"Only if those friends actually respect the wishes of the friend in question because, otherwise, it's not friendship on display but testosterone-laden boorishness, and, if that occurs, then the friend in question is going to have to seriously reconsider her friendships with those friends who put their own deranged needs above those of the friend that the friends actually claim to be friends with."

They blink at her, Clint with his mouth open and Tony with his brows raised. Darcy just nods. A few seconds pass then they look at each other. Clint shrugs, prompting Tony to sigh. He looks at Darcy and sighs again, and Darcy nearly closes her eyes and weeps at the universe finally giving her a break.

"Your point, convoluted as it is, Lewis, is not without merit."

"Thank you."

"So, in that spirit of the friendship you so potently articulated, why don't we settle on a compromise? You give us his name so we can do the requisite background check, and in return we promise not to—"

"Go full cray-cray on him when he arrives?"

"No my exact choice of words, but yes."

Darcy's heart starts to pound, salvation within reach. She looks from one to the other, her gaze lingering on Clint, who shoves more pizza into his mouth, his expression indecipherable. "Just a name?" she asks. "I give it to you, you two stay here when he comes, and you don't try to follow us _or _send anyone else after us either, _and _you're gone when I get back?"

"Yep," Tony says.

He looks at Clint. Darcy does too. After half a second, Clint nods his assent.

"Okay," Darcy says. "Okay." She breathes in and tries not to blink or look away or fidget or start to sweat or do anything else to indicate that the name she's about to speak is nothing more than a big, fat lie. Calling upon her dim memories from summer drama camp, Darcy squirms a little in reluctant discomfort, heaves a grudging sigh, and then mumbles a name.

"Donald Blake."

Tony nods and salutes her with his beer, but Clint, suspicious, paranoid, super-spy Clint, goes completely still, as still as a hunter who's sighted his prey, or as still as the world's greatest marksman with a target in sight.

"Donald Blake?" he asks.

Darcy swallows and forgets how to breathe. "Uh-huh."

"You sure about that?"

She narrows her eyes at him, veering wildly from the urge to fight to that of flight and back again. "Yes."

"What?" Tony asks, looking from one to the other. "What's going on?"

Clint reaches for a second slice of pizza, and the smile he sends them lets Darcy know that she's up shit creek without a paddle, GPS, or prayer.

"Dr. Donald Blake," he says, "is an ex-boyfriend of Foster's. He was listed in my briefing file when S.H.I.E.L.D. stationed me in Puente Antiguo after Thor arrived. So either Darcy's dating the ex whose last known address was in Albuquerque, dating Thor, who briefly used the name as an alias, or, completely against the spirit of friendship she just groused about, gave us a fake name to throw us off the scent." He leans back against the couch and takes a large bite, his eyes on Darcy. "I know which one I think it is."

"You got me," Darcy says, holding up her hands. "I've got a yen for beefy blond gods as big as your boner for previously frozen super-soldiers."

Clint scowls at her. Darcy gives him a sunny smile, but then she glances at Tony, who stares at her as Clint stared just a moment ago, with the stare of a man with a mark in his sights.

"Isn't it interesting," he begins, also lounging back against the couch as he casts a look at Clint, "that the kid here chose _not _to give us a name? It was the perfect solution. She got the space to go out on her date. We got the chance to quietly cyber-stalk a completely unsuspecting yet still potentially evil man. Yet she didn't. Now, why do you think that is, Clint?"

Darcy shifts her gaze to Clint. She tries to control her breathing, to slow her heart, but both ratchet up as his scowl melts into the very definition of a smug, cat-caught-the-canary grin.

"I don't know, Tony, but I believe it's because we already know who he is."

Shit.

"No," Darcy says, but panic drives her to do all that she tried not to do before. She fidgets now and averts her gaze before starting to sweat and, again, she forgets to breathe, and with each betraying tell, Clint and Tony swell in triumph.

"We do," Tony crows. "We know him."

"Uh, no, you don't. His name's Joe, and he's a quant little barista—"

"No. His name's Steve, and he's a quaint little genetically engineered supersoldier."

The world grinds to a halt half a foot from the precipice of doom, and all Darcy can do is pray.

"Isn't it?" Tony asks, leaning forward, his eyes intent upon her. "It's Rogers."

Darcy shakes her head, too shocked to speak, but apparently dumbfounded stupefaction closely mimics unbridled panic because Tony's grin widens.

"It is. This is why he agreed to help you, isn't it? You bribed the ninety-year old virgin with your boobs."

"What? No—"

But a knock on her door prevents her from blowing this most wondrous of gifts from the universe. Everyone straightens at the sound, Tony from anticipatory glee, Darcy from cautious optimism as a plan forms, and Clint… Well, Darcy can't tell with Clint, which diminishes her optimism a bit.

She eases to her feet, keeping her eyes on him. "Just… give me a minute, okay? Let me prep him first for…" She waves a hand at Tony, who's nearly bouncing on her couch in excitement.

Clint says nothing.

Darcy goes for the big guns.

"Please."

The appeal works its intended miracle, resurrecting just enough sanity within Clint for Darcy to hang him with. He nods and she turns for the hall, her heart in overdrive. Licking her lips, she wipes her palms on her jeans, grabs her purse from the small table (thankful now for bypassing the one with chains for straps), and opens the door.

If there's something beyond a Level 10, Bucky achieves it. He wears a gorgeous pair of dark grey pants and an ice-blue button-up, sans tie, with the sleeves folded to his elbows. He's pulled his hair back into a small bun, and he carries a leather coat in one hand and a small box of her favorite chocolate in the other, and if Darcy didn't already want to jump his bones to make-out with him as she became intimately acquainted with his intimate places, she would now.

She settles, though, just for the first, launching herself at him and the chocolate as she hisses half-hysterically, "Run!"

He does, and they race for the stairs. Bucky edges in front of her when they get to the door and shoulders it open, asking her as she darts through, "Why're we running?"

Breathless, she says, "Clint and Tony want to know who my date is, but I don't want them to because of reasons, so we have to run."

She starts for a descent, but Bucky swoops in and herds her toward the ascending stairs. "First thing they'll do is start down."

Darcy nods and pounds up after him. The appeal of her heels gives way after approximately three steps. The appeal of running vanishes entirely after two more.

"Hate stairs," she grumbles as they round the rail for the next half flight.

Bucky stops and spins around, and before she can compute, he's scooped her up with his right arm and propped her on his hip. Acting on instinct, her higher brain functions shorted out by his impressive display of he-man strength, Darcy wraps her legs around his waist and her left arm around his shoulders, and she tries not to paw or drool on him as he resumes their ascent.

"This… is so hot."

His mouth curves into a smug little smile, which does not help her vow to restrain the urge to grope him inappropriately. Neither does the way he smells. Clean soap and crisp aftershave and the minty scent of toothpaste draw her closer, Darcy looping her right arm, equipped with both purse and chocolate, over his chest. There's a small hitch in his step then and his fingers tighten on her hip. Darcy smiles, but then she spots a tragic trail of desperation and glitter in the stairwell and eases back.

"Not your floor," she says. "They think you're Steve. Well, Tony does."

Bucky quirks a brow at that, but he stays silent. He also stays on course, clarifying at her look of inquiry, "Just passing through."

They follow the feathers onto his floor and then follow the trail to his door. As Bucky reaches for the knob, Darcy sees the fresh shine of cleaning supplies, Steve making good on his intent to disinfect the doorway. Once through the door, Bucky kicks it shut and shifts Darcy so she's facing him, her ankles now locked at the small of his back. She clasps her hands behind his neck and takes a moment to look at him. He's not sweating, though he's just run up through three flights of stairs while carrying her; he doesn't even seem to be out of breath. Her lecherous brain shorts out at the thought of all the ways that that incredible stamina could benefit her.

The smug smile returns to his face. "See something you like?"

"Yes," Darcy says, and she's not even embarrassed by her blatant lust. "This—clothing wise—is completely unexpected. And hot."

"I remember how to dress for a date."

"Yes, but knowing and doing are two different things." She smoothes her left hand over his shoulder, luxuriating in the feel of the soft cotton beneath her fingertips. "Where did you get these? Did you go shopping after I left?"

He nods.

"With Steve?"

Bucky nods again.

"And you didn't come back with something grandpa or six sizes too small?"

There's an indignant shout from deeper in the apartment followed a beat later by rich laughter. Darcy closes her eyes. Of course Steve is here, and of course he heard her, this well within his audible radius. As her face starts to heat, Bucky starts to laugh, shaking beneath her from the effort to keep silent. Opening her eyes, Darcy pokes the back of his neck, which only causes him to laugh harder. She glares at him as he walks them down the hall, the hall broadening into a living room. There she sees Steve on the couch, his feet on the coffee table and a baseball game playing on their enormous TV.

"My clothes aren't six sizes too small," he says when they walk in.

"I don't know, man. You wear some tight-ass shit."

Darcy recognizes the voice now and the laughter from before. Sam ambles from the kitchen, two beers in his hand. "Why are you two here?" he asks, tilting his head at their configuration.

"Running from Clint and Tony."

Steve nods as though this made complete sense, but Sam raises his brows. "Uh… why?"

Darcy sighs. "Because Tony's a sad only child and Clint's brother tried to kill him once, so they both work out their frustrated sibling angst with me. Today's soup du jour is deranged overprotection."

At that, Steve stands, all traces of mirth gone from his face. "Did they say something to you?" he asks Bucky. "Because I told them—"

Bucky looses a soft sigh. "Speaking of deranged…"

"—that you were healing."

Darcy looks at Bucky, finds him in the midst of a long-suffering sigh. "Oh, they don't know it's him," she says, turning back to Steve. "They think I'm dating you. Well, Tony does."

No one speaks for a few seconds then Sam and Bucky burst out laughing. Darcy smiles too at the expression on Steve's face, his furrowed brow and slack mouth simultaneously conveying shock and outrage.

"Me? What's wrong with me?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?" Bucky asks him. "Because I've got a few ideas."

Steve turns to Bucky to glare.

"Actually," Darcy says, "it's no so much that something's wrong with you. Or there is, at least Tony thinks so, but it's, uh, because, you know, he thinks, uh, that—" It's about here that Darcy reconsiders the idea of telling Captain America that Iron Man thinks he's an ancient virgin. She starts to squirm, seeking escape for the second time that evening, but Bucky holds her fast. She turns to scowl at him. The shit-eating grin he wears lets her know that he knows _exactly _what Tony thinks about Steve.

Steve, of course, doesn't know, so, of course, he asks. "What does he think?"

Darcy sighs.

Bucky continues to grin. "Yeah, Darcy. Tell Steve here what Stark thinks about him."

"Murder," she hisses at him. "So much murder. In your sleep."

His grin turns seductive, and Darcy tries her best to cling to exasperation rather than succumbing to intense lust. "I told you, doll. Dinner first. Then you and your modern ways can take me to bed and educate my stuffy, old, virginal—"

Darcy slaps a hand over his mouth. She glances back at Steve and sees him frowning at her. A high-pitched giggle of encroaching hysteria escapes her at the sight.

"I would _not_," she blurts out.

His frown deepens. "You wouldn't what?"

"I respect him as a person."

Steve raises his brows. "O…kay."

Beneath her palm, Bucky opens his mouth.

In his hands, Darcy tenses. "Please don't lecture me."

Steve frowns again. "Why would I do that?"

At this, Sam shakes his head and walks away, muttering about his need for sane friends.

"Because," Darcy squeaks, and it's then that Bucky licks a slow caress across her palm. Her eyes going wide, she tugs out a warning, a plea, perhaps, in the more lust-crazed portions of her brain, an encouragement, on a loose lock of hair at the nape of his neck. Bucky, of course, interprets the gesture in the last, squeezing her hips as he flicks the tip of his tongue against her lifeline. About sixty percent of her body spontaneously combusts, and her brain gets to work on the other forty percent by imagining in great detail how his tongue would feel on _other _parts of her body.

"Oh, god," she moans.

"Oh, god," Steve groans. "Stark thinks I'm a virgin."

Bucky abandons his pursuit to drive Darcy nuts to laugh at Steve. "Got it in one, pal. Now the question is, what are you going to do about it?"

The blank look of dismay Steve wears lasts exactly four seconds before dissolving into absolute glee. "I'm going to do what all awkward ninety-year old virgins do. I'm going to ask a whole lot of questions." He looks at Darcy. "Tomorrow we conference."

She nods, her prior lusty discomfort abating a bit in the face of future shenanigans. With a wave goodbye, Steve returns to the TV, to Sam and his shaking head, and Bucky directs them through the apartment to the rear door. He seems content to continue carrying her, so Darcy contents herself to let him, bringing her right arm between them in order to open his gift of chocolate.

"How'd you know about this?" she asks as she starts to pry the package open.

"Saw them on your desk when you were hiding from me."

Darcy makes a sound of disgust. "You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"

He grins at her. "Nope."

They round a corner. Bucky shifts Darcy to his left hand and opens the back door. The small foyer contains a service elevator and a second set of stairs. Darcy considers asking him why this elevator rather than the other two operating in Avengers Tower, but at that moment, she finagles the chocolate box open. She pops one into her mouth as Bucky walks them to the elevator.

"You gonna share?" he asks as he hits the call button.

Darcy shakes her head. "Not after the stunt you pulled. I don't know if I'll be able to look Steve in the eye again."

Bucky raises a brow. "You do know he's not a virgin, right?"

Darcy cocks a brow at him as the elevator arrives. "I know. Not with his ass. But if Clint and Tony and Thor occupy the overprotective sibling spots for me, then Steve does for you, and I, I don't know, I wanted to make a good impression."

Bucky presses the button for the ground floor then twists them ninety degrees so Darcy can rest against the right wall. A faint frown creases his brow as he says, "But he already knows you."

The elevator starts to descend. "Exactly. Steve knows me, loudmouth, cock-covered, glitter-addicted Darcy. But you've been to literal hell and back. I doubt my particular brand of crazy is his first choice to help ease you back into the world."

Brow still creased, Bucky peers at her, so long that Darcy ducks her head. She focuses on storing the box in her purse and not on his potential hesitation in light of Steve's disapproval. She feels her throat start to swell with emotion, hysteria and dread and a dash of the always-awesome embarrassment, then Bucky raises his right hand and she stills as he brushes his fingertips against her cheek.

"Maybe not," he says softly. "But you're mine."

Darcy lifts her eyes. He looks at her with bright eyes, both hot and soft, and the sight pulls a smile back to her face. "That was smooth, dude."

The smug grin returns. "Yes, it was."

The elevator begins to slow. They stare at each other, beaming, then his gaze drops to her mouth, and her stomach flips and her nerves begin to flutter as he says, "I'm going to kiss you now. Is that okay?"

Darcy attempts a frown. "I don't know. You're an old fashioned guy and all. Usually the kiss comes _after _the date."

"Well, so does dessert," he says as he leans in, "but you didn't let that stop you."

No, she hadn't. She never does, eating dessert for breakfast and breakfast for dinner. And she doesn't now either, tilting her face up to meet his. Bucky presses his mouth to hers, and the kiss is lush and sweet, sweeter than she anticipated given the heady rush she's experienced since she first laid eyes on him. He cups the back of her neck and settles his left hand low on her waist. Darcy drapes her arms over his shoulders and breathes him in only for her breath to still as he mimics his earlier teasing, drawing the tip of his tongue across the seam of her lips in a slow caress. Darcy opens her mouth, and Bucky darts in, making her clutch at his shirt, making her lean into him and tighten her legs around his—

The crack of thunder in the elevator jerks her back. Only Bucky's hand saves her head from smacking against the wall. Darcy takes one second to indulge in the sizzling flash of panic that's followed the thunder, she takes the next to try to tamp it down, and then she cracks one eye open. Thor stands just outside the elevator, Mew-Mew in his hand. She suspects Clint summoned him, not as sure as Tony in the theory of Steve as her paramour. He's eschewed the rest of his armor for jeans and a plaid shirt, but the civilian dress does little to mitigate the aura of unmistakable intimidation about him.

"Hey, buddy," she says, wincing slightly at her awkward squawk.

His voice is warm when he greets her. "Darcy."

It's less warm when he turns to Bucky. "Friend of Darcy."

Bucky hasn't moved, or he has, she's realized, but only to angle his body between her and the open elevator doors. In any other circumstance, the realization would make her sigh, both the sigh that she sighs at cute puppy videos and the sigh that she sighs when exasperated by excessive machismo in the twenty-first century. But all Darcy can feel now is pee-your-pants anxiety at this potential storm brewing. Looking at Bucky, she says, "Time to face the music, dude. Or the thunder, in this case."

He hesitates. Darcy looks past him and tries to shoot a soothing smile at Thor. Another second passes and then Bucky sighs and lowers her to the ground. She wiggles the feeling back into her legs before wiggling around Bucky. Thor watches them, his aura of intimidation increasing as she turns Bucky around.

"Thor, this is—"

"James." He blinks at Bucky, silent a moment. Then he says, "Clint did not say it was you who intended to court Darcy."

Hope blooms within Darcy at the lack of immediate fisticuffs. It increases when Bucky eases up beside her and clasps her hand. "He didn't know. We ran away because he's an assbutt who threw eggs at me. But this is good, right? Yes? Bucky is Steve's friend… a nice guy…"

"Allegedly."

Speaking of exasperation. Darcy sighs and turns toward Bucky. He doesn't look at her, but she sees the faintest trace of a smile on his face. "Is this _really_ the best time?" she asks, trying this time not to hiss.

His smile deepens a fraction. "Yes."

"Because you have a burning desire to be squashed by a magical hammer?"

"Not particularly." He glances at her now. "But if you can't joke in the face of certain death, when can you?"

"Uh, when you're _not _faced with certain death."

Bucky tilts his head, all cocky swagger and delighted mischief. "Where's the fun in that?"

The response stuns her for a moment. Then Darcy shakes her head. She may or may not gape at him in the process. "And here I was worried that Steve would think I was too nuts for you."

Bucky grins down at her. "I know. It was cute."

She's about to respond, an epic rant about how she's not cute, not with hot-rolled curls and excessively high heels, primed, but Thor steps forward then and claps a hand on Bucky's shoulder. Darcy tries not to snicker as he buckles from the weight.

"Long have I waited for a worthy man to present himself as a squire for Darcy. Steven speaks highly of you, and you show great spirit, though I sought to incapacitate you with fear. This is a most glorious moment indeed."

Bucky stares at Thor, his eyes wide. "Are you… gonna cry?"

"Perhaps," Thor says. He drops Mew-Mew between their feet and gathers the three of them into a fierce hug. "I had lost hope for such an outcome after the unfortunate liaison with the Hydra miscreant."

Darcy sighs and pats him lightly on the back. "Thanks, buddy. Really feeling the love here."

"Love!" Thor bellows, making both she and Bucky jump. He steps back, gathers Mew-Mew in his hand once more. His smile dazzles, warm like the sun. "All deserve to experience such a tremendous emotion. So go forth, court one another with luminous seductions, and know," he says to Bucky, never dropping his smile, "that if you cast this opportunity to woo Darcy into decay with egregious actions, I shall be forced to demonstrate to you the true strength of a god. Which shall engender no quips, I assure you."

Stomach churning at this, the realization of all she sought to avoid the past half-hour, Darcy glances at Bucky. He doesn't tremble in the face of such deranged overprotection though, nor does he rankle. Instead he stands composed, responding to Thor with a single nod. Relief courses through her at the sight, both fizzy and fierce, like popped champagne, like water swirling over falls. She tugs on Bucky's hand as Thor eases to the side, and they disembark from the elevator.

"I shall maintain your secret," Thor says as he assumes their place inside the car.

Darcy nods, lifting her hand to wave goodbye. Then an idea takes hold and she darts back around, so unexpectedly and energetically that she nearly knocks Bucky from his feet. "Can you tell Tony you saw me with Steve instead?" she asks Thor.

Thor glances at Bucky. "You wish me to lie?"

"Not lie _per se_, just continue the assumption that Tony ridiculously made." At his look, she clarifies. "He thinks the only reason Steve would agree to help me against him is if I bribed him with my boobs. Because he thinks Captain Apple Tree's a virgin."

"Steven? A virgin?" Thor begins to laugh.

Darcy does too. "I know, right?"

Shaking his head, a smile on his face, Thor says to her, "I will do as you request. Gladly. And often. Now, please, enjoy your evening."

He presses the button for his floor. Darcy waves until the elevator doors close then she turns to Bucky, who stares at her with a look of utterly delighted confusion on his face.

"Captain Apple Tree?"

She nods. "Like Johnny Appleseed. He's Captain Apple Tree, with an ass like an apple and a body like a tree."

The confusion gives way to utter delight. "Please tell me Steve knows about this."

"He does. Why do you think I wanted to make a good impression?

At that, Bucky pulls her closer. He lifts their still clasped hands between them. The unexpected gesture makes her stomach flip. "You don't have to make a good impression. He likes you. He doesn't always _get _you, but he likes you. _I'm _the one who needs to make a good impression."

"Maybe with Jane," Darcy says, "but you've just gotten Thor's seal of approval. Tony wouldn't have let you to move in if he didn't approve, and there are two things that I know with absolute certainty Clint likes in this world: awesome marksmen and former Russian assassins on a current path of kickass redemption."

Bucky smiles at her. "And what do you like? We've got glitter, chocolate, Steve's ass…"

Darcy returns his grin. "There's also this really hot, really old guy who's promised me dinner. He's not so bad. Allegedly."

"Good to know."

He leans in and kisses her again, a soft one that confirms for Darcy the surprisingly sentimental core to the comely and cutthroat soldier. Releasing her hand, Bucky pivots and draws her back in with an arm around her shoulders then they head for the exit, for the first, Darcy hopes, of many dates, even those preceded by awkward gawking, glitter egg and feathering, and the certifiable madness of billionaires, spies, and gods.

AN: Thank you to everyone who has favorited, followed, and commented on this little series! I've appreciated the warm reception it's received. This is likely the last story for a while. My writing time is about to significantly diminish and what little I have will be devoted to the sequel to "That Which You Seek." If the muse strikes though, I will return here. :D


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